The Dulcitar project – Camp Goodtimes -- June and July, 2104
by Michael Dresdner
In a heartwarming scene worthy of a well-scripted movie, eager
high school students plop down on the ground, matched up with much younger campers,
with a kit of what looks like guitar parts in front of them. Then, with the
patience and care of classic big brothers/big sisters, they adroitly guide the
youngsters’ hands into building their own little musical classics.
It’s “build day” at Camp Goodtimes, a refuge for children
affected by cancer, and the team of students from Rogers High School in
Puyallup has already been at it since 6 am.
What is Camp Goodtimes? To quote The Goodtimes Project
website, “Camp Goodtimes was established in 1984 to provide a no-cost camp
environment for children affected by cancer where they can recapture the joys
of childhood.” More accurately, it is a special haven, a hallowed ground that
goes a long way toward helping the afflicted rebuild and restore what’s been
lost.
Once at the Vashon Island campground, eight or nine high
school student volunteers pile out of a school-provided van loaded with
instrument parts, and explode onto camp. They unload the van, set up all the
tools and parts, stage the work area, and wait for the campers to arrive. It
will be a long day; they’ll be hard at it for about 12 hours, but today is only
the finale. For them, work started on this project many months earlier.
This is the the third straight year that a team of woodshop
students from Rogers High School, working with a small cluster of like-minded
adults, helped almost 100 youngsters per year at Camp Goodtimes build a musical
instrument. This time it was a child-size travel dulcimer with a guitar-shaped
body; a Dulcitar, if you would. The pictures should give you a good idea
of what both the kit, and the finished instrument each one gets to take home,
looks like.
After some design and prototyping, things take off at the
school’s shop, where students under the guidance of Jon Cerio and his brother David use
standard woodworking tools, specialized equipment, CNC tooling, and even lasers
to make hundreds of parts. They do a production run to create enough pieces to form about 110 instruments, with the excess to allow for glitches during
assembly. Operations that require equipment the school lacks are done outside,
in my shop or that of Warmoth Guitars. Strings, tuners, wood, and other needed
items are bought with money donated by soft-hearted locals, including my own
local woodworking club, the Evergreen Woodworker’s Guild.
When it is over, a batch of delighted campers is “rocking
out” on the instruments they themselves made, and a weary but elated gaggle of
some of our finest high school students is heading home, replete with a handful
of fond memories and well-deserved accolades.
All photos courtesy of The Goodtimes Project
